Daily Practice: A Sensorial Playground

Guide your fingers around the curves of each foot. Discover the hills and valleys are make up your main mode of transportation.

Notice how the skin under your most obvious arch feels different than the skin of your heel.

Which gives you more feedback? Your arch or your heel? Where are you most able to feel the touch of your finger?

Now go to your toes.

With your eyes closed, explore your little toe…

The texture of the skin on the top and on the surface that touches the floor when you stand. It’s length. The shape of your toenail. How clearly do you feel your touch?

Your fourth toe…

How far from your little toe is your fourth toe? How much longer is your fourth toe than your little toe? Discover the texture of the skin of this toe. How clearly do you feel your touch? Compared to your little toe?

Your third toe…

What is the texture of the skin on the back of this toe? How long is this toe? What is the shape of your toenail? What sort of curve do you notice? What is the texture on the very tip of this toe? How clearly do you feel your touch? Compared to your other toes? (Go back and touch again if you’re not sure.)

Your second toe…

How close to your other toes is this toe? Stroke along the length of this toe and feel each joint. Gently press the very tip and observe how it bends. Go back down from the tip and find the “pillow” of the toe – the pudgier spot that contacts the floor when you stand. How clearly can you feel your touch? Compared to your other toes?

Your big toe…

Gently press the neck of your toe and observe how it responds. Notice the space between this toe and your second toe.

Stand and observe the relationship your big toe has with the floor. Do this with each of your toes. Do they all meet the floor in the same way? Place your foot down very slowly and observe how each toe greets the floor and comes to stand.

Walk very slowly, feeling how your feet work.

The shift from one edge of your foot to the other.

Your arches flattening when you put weight on them and then springing back when you roll off of them.

Your toes as they meet the floor and push off again. Not as a group but as 5 or 10 (depending on how you want to think of it) separate body parts with 5 (or 10) separate jobs to do.

You may or may not be able to feel each toe individually, but the more you practice – the more you attend to your feet and toes – the more sensitive you will become.